Obamanomics in action.

• Author: Suderman, Peter
• Position: Soundbite - Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses - Interview

Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney walks a big beat: the unholy alliance between corporations and the state, which he first chronicled in his 2006 book The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money. His new book, Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses (Regnery), focuses on the corporatist domestic agenda of the Obama administration.

Associate Editor Peter Suderman interviewed Carney by email in November.

Q: You warn people about Obama's "big-government-big-business" agenda. Does that mean big corporations are the enemy?

A: Big corporations aren't necessarily the enemy, but I've found that the bigger a business is, the more likely it is to use big government for profit. There are many reasons for this, but the two most important are that regulation always adds to overhead, which disproportionately harms smaller businesses. Giving more power to the government means giving more influence to the lobbyists, and Morn and Pop can't afford the best lobbyists.

Q: You focus on Democrats. But are Republicans really any different?

A: I focus on Obama because he is currently the prime practitioner of corporatism, but also because his coziness with big business is so contrary to his rhetoric and so contrary to the view so much of the media have of him and his agenda. Fortune started an article in October with the line, "No one can accuse President Barack Obama of cozying up to corporate America." The article went on to note Obama's coziness with Google, but it painted this closeness as an exception. The Washington Post carried a straight news story claiming that "Obama intends to challenge the power of lobbyists." And of course, Obama has portrayed his health care regulations as a battle against well-funded special interests.

I think my book helps set the health care and global warming debates on...